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 the ball slipped. In the end, Kewpie went back to his famous drop and managed to elicit faint applause from Laurie.

Laurie couldn't get his heart into the business this morning. Despite his efforts to forget it, that idiotic boast to Bob Starling kept returning to his mind to bother him. Either he must confess to Bob that he hadn't meant a word of what he had said or he must think up some scheme of, at least, pretending to seek aid for Miss Comfort. He liked Bob a whole lot and he valued Bob's opinion of him, and he hated to confess that he had just let his tongue run away with him. On the other hand, there wasn't a thing he could do that would be of any practical help to Miss Comfort. He would just have to bluff, he concluded: make believe that he was doing a lot of heavy thinking and finally just let the thing peter out. Quite unjustly Laurie experienced a feeling of mild distaste for Miss Comfort.

In the middle of the forenoon, Bob, meeting him in the corridor, would have stopped him, but Laurie pushed by with a great display of haste, briefly replying in the negative to Bob's mysteriously whispered inquiry: "Anything new,